chef – Unfolded

sophiavandenhoek July 11, 2015

Restaurant De Jong, Rotterdam

Jim de Jong, one of Rotterdam’s most remarkable chefs with a restaurant that might just be my favorite in my home town. With internships at Le Cirque (Robert Kranenborg) in The Hague, The Fat Duck (Heston Blumenthal) in London and at Le Jardin des Sens (Pourcel brothers) in Montpellier he gained quite some experience.

Vegetarian tartar

At the age of 21, he opened his first restaurant together with his former partners, called De Jonge de Jong (nowadays De Matroos en het Meisje) but a few years later in 2013 he started Restaurant De Jong on his own. With a little help from his love (who works there as well) he created this gem in the Hofbogen, a former station. A romantic French touch, Scandinavian simplicity and Dutch no-nonsense influences can be found in the interior as well as in the food.

You can choose from two surprise menus, one of them is based on vegetables and the other one includes fish or meat. The dishes change constantly and Jim is not afraid to get a little experimental in his kitchen. But there’s always a solid grounding to his dishes. The base is mainly French but Jim always tries to stay up to date and does a lot of research. His dishes, his menu and his way of cooking are a melting pot of advanced and old techniques, other traditions and his own Dutch tradition as well. From preserving to liquid nitrogen, Jim doesn’t have any boundaries, he’s not bound to one certain style. A starter might look and taste like something you’ll eat Noma, in your main course you might find some El Bulli influences and the dessert that will follow can make you feel like you’re in a French bistro (with some added edible glitter). I had my best ‘Moelleux aux chocolat’ ever at De Jong.

Like many restaurants nowadays do Jim also works with the seasons and uses local ingredients. He forages in nearby woods and he has his own garden where he grows herbs, flowers and vegetables. He uses a lot of the flowers in his menu and not just for the looks but always essential to the dish as well. So don’t take them off!

With his Rotterdam spirit and his beautiful complexe simplicity, Jim knows how to pleasantly surprise me every time. It’s not a traditional restaurant, you’ll eat what the chef has in mind for you that day. I think he’s the coolest and most talented kid on the culinary block of Rotterdam. Adventurous, humorous and beautiful feel good food is what he serves. Just love him cause he’s not afraid to take risks.

Go there, be open to what the evening will bring you and get surprised.

restaurantdejong.nl

Raampoortstraat 38, Rotterdam

sophiavandenhoek April 5, 2015

Lux, Rotterdam

Rotterdam, The Netherlands 4 Replies

Sunday. The perfect day to enjoy a long and relaxed lunch.

A personal favourite for Sunday lunch in Rotterdam is Italian restaurant Lux. The restaurant is something of an institution, existing for more than 25 years. Since a few years chef Milan Gataric is the new owner and he’s rocking the cucina romana. Testaccio is the original neighborhood of Rome where the roman cuisine, known as the quinto quarto (fifth quarter) was born. Using this Italian nose to tail approach Milan might serve you slow cooked beef cheek or grilled veal heart.

One of the best dishes is the spaghetti with grated cured tuna heart, egg yolk, fennel seeds, red pepper and garlic. The right seasoning turns the seemingly simple dishes into the perfect Italian feel good food. All subtile and very well balanced.

You might be getting quite satisfied to the end of your ‘secondi’ but I highly recommend you to not skip dessert. Definitely don’t when there’s chocolate ice-cream on the menu. I haven’t had better on my trips to Italy!

Lux, ‘s Gravendijkwal 133, Rotterdam

sophiavandenhoek March 3, 2015

Cutler & Co, Melbourne

Australia, Melbourne 1 Reply

One of the best surprises in Melbourne: Cutler & Co. After a long, hot and sweaty day of wandering through Melbourne we accidentally walked by Cutler & Co. The good looking restaurant caught our eye. At that time our experience in Melbourne already learned us all the places in Australia that look good actually serve good food as well so we stepped in. Wearing shorts, flip flops and messy hair immediately made us feel a bit uncomfortable when we saw the beautiful interior but the friendly staff at the door made us feel welcome anyway. Unfortunately they were fully booked that evening but we got ourselves a table for the next one. Without doing any more research we dressed up the next evening to eat at Cutler & Co, not knowing the restaurant was voted nr 7 in the top 10 best Australian restaurants by Gourmet Traveller. The restaurant is classy but unpretentious. You’ll find a mix of diners ranging from young couples to business meetings and family-get-togethers. The enthusiastic, friendly and well informed service team knew how to precisely introduce the dishes without overdoing it and kept us focussed on the degustation menu with paired juices en excellent wines. Cutler & Co, Melbourne | un-fold-ed.com We started off with a delicious Ortiz anchovy pastry, followed by the tuna tartar with slightly smoked kohlrabi, fromage blanc, bottarga and lavas. This might have been the highlight of my meal although the following course with pickled mussels, bean salad and almond, fennel cream was very, very impressive as well. Cutler & Co, Melbourne | un-fold-ed.com And of course the rest of the meal is also worth mentioning. Like the Flounder with blackened leek, pickled onion and Brown Butter. The smoked duck breast, salsify and prunes. The dry aged lamb saddle, confit belly, garlic sauce and fermented carrot. Dessert was no letdown either. In fact, the buttermilk ice-cream with melon, cucumber, verbana jelly and thickened melon juice was in our top 3 dishes at Cutler & Co. as well! Happily surprised by how good the food was I did some research afterwards and found out Chef Andrew McConnell is a veteran of the Melbourne restaurant scene an has won just about every award going during his career. His restaurant group also includes Cummulus Inc, Supernormal, Moon Under Water/ Builders Arms Hotel and Luxembourg. I visited Builders Arms Hotel and I’ve put the rest on the list for my next visit to Australia! 55–57 Gertrude St. Fitzroy 3065, Melbourne

sophiavandenhoek December 3, 2014

In de Wulf, Dranouter

Belgium, Dranouter 2 Replies

It’s been more than a week already since my visit to Michelin starred restaurant In de Wulf and I still have no idea where to start. The 18 course menu? The beautiful location in the southern part of Belgium? Late night snacking with all of the staff? The breakfast the next day? Or the warm personality of Kobe Desramaults that shines through in everything? Which I already noticed visiting The Superette a few weeks ago.

Though you might not expect to read this much on a photography blog, I would recommend the foodies to stay tuned.

Kobe wants to take the whole process of cooking from beginning to end into his own hands by collaborating with local breeders and farmers and by foraging intensively. There are a lot of fields, dunes, and forests around Dranouter (where In de Wulf is located) where he and his entire team collect herbs, sea buckthorn, seaweed, mushrooms, poppies, meadow sweat, flowers… you name it. Because of this, and because of working seasonally, the menu changes daily.

So much happened in the 24 hours I spend there and I will share all of it with you but it’s too much for one post so I’ll start where I started: lunch. Entering the restaurant with a warm welcoming we were offered a tour through the kitchen right away before we got to our table.

In de Wulf, Dranouter | un-fold-ed.com We started our lunch with beet with a crumble of rye and lemon verbena followed by a crispy pork skin cracker with aioli, dusted with mustard powder . A very good start but it got even better with the arrival of the whelk clams with bay leaves vinaigrette, accompanied by a tartar of mussels from the North Sea. The smoked mackerel that arrived after that was in my opinion the best looking dish with smoke still coming out of the curry plant. But all the following dishes were very beautiful presented, well balanced and very tasteful as well. A poached egg yolk with radish flowers, Judas’s ear mushrooms with celeriac butter juice (!), asian style squid, smoked oyster on pine branches, raw scallop from Duinkerk with raw chestnut and fermented leak juice, smoked potato with a buttermilk potato espuma and a roasted root vegetable salad with topinambur and carrot. The 6 months riped and short roasted milk cow with red onion looked (and tasted) so delicious I even forgot to make a picture. Or maybe that was because I was quite impressed by mr. Desramaults serving this dish himself. They saved the best for last: the boudin noir (blood sausage) with a beetroot sauce and caramelized baby onions. Next to that a crispy pork head snack served on a pig’s skull. Normally I’m not a big fan of blood sausage and eating pig brains didn’t sound too appealing to me at first but in the end this was the best dish I had that day.

After this we had an extra course, specially made for us by Kobe himself in his wood oven outside but I’ll share pictures of this later.

We ended our meal with 3 desserts. The first one with beetroot, rose hip and yoghurt was my favorite, though I’m normally a bigger fan of heavy chocolate desserts. The second one was a new interpretation of the carrot cake with caramelized white chocolate and fermented carrot. The last one a mousse and a granita of apple.

The drip coffee was served with beignets, a meadow sweat cheese tart, a chocolate bar filled with caramel and a jelly of sea buckthorn with a verbena powder. This lunch accompanied by good wines and home-made juices was almost perfect but I told you it was a 24 hour lasting experience so keep posted for more on In de Wulf!